Richard Spencer is one of the Daily Telegraph's Middle East correspondents. Married with three children, he was previously news editor, and then China correspondent for six years. He is based in Cairo.

So who are the Spartans now?

I'm fascinated by the row set off by the latest Hollywood epic, 300, a reenactment of the Battle of Thermopylae between the Spartans and the Persians in 480BC.

The Acropolis commemoratesÂ the defeat of the Persians

I haven't seen it – though no doubt DVDs are available outside the Friendship Store in Beijing – but that's not necessary to understand the argument.

For those of you who haven't been following, this was set off on his blog by my old friend Ben Fenton, the Ayatollah of the A desk as we used to know him, who pointed outÂ the crude symbolism of freedom-loving Spartans (ie Americans) fighting off hordes of hairy, uncouth Persians (the ancestors of the Iranians of today).

The theme was taken up by Ben's sidekick, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, whom I do not know personally, but who attackedÂ the insult furiously. For what it's worth, in this debate I am fully on the side of the wild-eyed zealots.

However, I wonder why no-one has yet picked up on the China angle. It's not surprising, perhaps.

This fascinating period of east-west relations is poorly remembered despite its being so fundamental to the development of what we hopefully call European civilisation and despite the major battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, and Salamis, being so dramatic. Marathon must be, in its own way, the best-known battle name in history.

But read a history book of the period, and you might find yourself asking this important, and puzzling question. Why should Americans want to identify with the Spartans? Surely the Americans are the Athenians, the dominant force in the Greek world at the time, a rich, trading state with a vibrant democracy and a cultural life based around poetry and the stage, the Hollywood of its day, that even today is regarded as central to our understanding of its society.

The Spartans, on the other hand, were a newly rising power. Unlike the Athenians, they were a cautious, inward-looking dictatorship. They based their growth onÂ improbably tough attitudes to human endurance, and a concentration on military strength.

They were deeply reluctant to get involved in matters outside their borders, and at first regarded the dispute with Persia as not really having anything to do with them.

In part, this attitude stemmed from their fear of instability at home. Spartan society was reliant on a serf class, the so-called "helots", who did the manual and rural labour but had no ownership of land or property and were basically under the control of the state.

The Spartan rulers feared that if the army were sent abroad, there would be insurrection.

So when they were eventually persuaded that dealing with Persian aggression was not only in everybody's interest but an important symbol of the responsibilities they ought to be taking if they wanted to be taken seriously on the international stage, they really did have something to prove.

The heroic Battle of Thermopylae, though a defeat, immeasurably improved the standing of the Spartans in the Greek-speaking world. Sparta soon rose to challenge Athenian dominance. Athenian politics had its own flaws, not least quirks in its democracy such as ostracism, a system which allowed envy and malice to deprive the city of its most able leaders.

The city's freedoms were easily portrayed by jealous and prurient outsiders as decadence.

Of course, those many people elsewhere who admired Sparta for its, well, Spartan values didn't have to experience the brutalities of the rule which inflicted them.

Be that as it may, it seemed inevitable with the changing attitudes of other city states that conflict between these two very different powers was inevitable.

When the Peloponnesian War began, it nevetheless seemed probable to many that Athens must win – it was richer, and had popular will on its side.

The Spartans still had the helot problem, and a lack of experience in dealing with the far-flung places on which the Athenians believed that they could rely for support. But the Spartans out-thought the Athenians, and won a series of victories partly, as I indicated above, because some of the best Athenian generals and strategists (such as Thucydides, the historian who wrote all this up) were put to one side and ignored for political reasons.

Meanwhile, the sparkling Athenian democracy took a number of bizarre wrong-turns. In one of the most shocking human rights abuses of ancient times – by no means the worst, probably, but shocking simply because Athenians were perpetrators – the entire adult male population of the island of Melos was killed after it refused to join the Athens-led alliance, and was defeated by an Athenian fleet.

If the Athenians intended a warning to others, they failed – international support crumbled. In the end, the Athenians lost their fleet to an inspired piece of asymmetric warfare (the Spartans nicked it while they weren't looking) and were forced to surrender. At home, they went into a sort of moral panic, most poignantly demonstrated by the execution of their greatest thinker, Socrates, and, in terms of power, they were never the same again.

Over the longer term, though, that's not all there is to say. A humbled, more modest Athens continued to be a beacon of civilisation, producing great works of literature, above all the writings of Plato and Aristotle, to which, as it was once accurately said, the history of western philosophy is but a series of footnotes. And while other empires rose, it was to the glorious years of 5th and 4th century Athens that they looked for inspiration. Perhaps it needed its defeat, so that the world could remember the values for which it is still admired today.

Sparta, meanwhile, was curiously unable to solve its longer-term structural problems, for all the ruthlessness and brilliance of its oligarchy. At one point, it committed a particularly mean trick: its leaders invited leading helot men to volunteer for the army, in return for their freedom.

After they had won victory, they were promptly beheaded; draw out the potential trouble-makers, you see, the better to dispose of them.

After a short period of apparent pre-eminence, it fell from grace once again, its dependence on the helots at home and obsessive focus on Athens abroad perhaps havingÂ prevented it from developing a cultural beating heart of its own.

Today, the tourists pour on to the Acropolis, built to commemorate the defeat of the Persians, and watch still enthralling performances of such great tragedies as Persae, Aeshylus's retelling of the Persian wars, at Epidauros. Of ancient Sparta there is now little trace – a warning to all peoples who confuse strength with greatness.

Now then. I was going to tell you about the China angle, wasn't I? Oh well, perhaps another time.